Summary
- Cyberpunk 2077's background NPCs have greatly improved since its initial launch, with more visual variety and memorable characters.
- The redesigned police system in Patch 2.0 has made Night City a more immersive and engaging open world.
- CD Projekt Red's efforts to redeem the game have culminated in the success of Patch 2.0 and the upcoming Project Orion, showing that the future of Cyberpunk 2077 is promising.
One of the more understated improvements that Cyberpunk 2077 made over the years was perfecting the random citizens of Night City, as players seem to be obsessed with how visually striking and memorable some of its background NPCs can look like. When Cyberpunk 2077 initially launched, the game had plenty of technical and design issues, and CD Projekt Red spent an insane amount of money to bring the game closer to its original vision. While the main story itself was well-written and gracefully tackled complex existential themes with its cast of characters, it took until Patch 1.5 for Cyberpunk 2077 to improve its background NPCs.
The open world in Cyberpunk 2077 is a far more immersive experience in 2023 than it was in 2020. The completely redesigned police system in Patch 2.0 for Cyberpunk 2077 has finally given players a feature that many have been clamoring for since release. Night City has become a living, breathing metropolis, and most fans would argue that it's a lot more fun to engage with this version of Cyberpunk 2077's open world, as opposed to the flat urban landscape that it used to be.
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The immersion-breaking clones that once dotted the streets in Cyberpunk 2077 are gone, as more visual variety was introduced to the pedestrians of Night City. A player named nopalskucing couldn't help but share one of these pedestrians on the official Cyberpunk 2077 subreddit, claiming that the woman was the most elegant and beautiful random NPC that they've ever seen in a video game. Most comments found it difficult to argue against the statement, and even cited an uncanny resemble to actress Sophie Turner, known for her role as Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones.
With the way NPCs in Cyberpunk 2077 work, all the pedestrians are hand-crafted non-randomized characters pulled from a long list, and subsequently spawned in appropriate neighborhoods of Night City. Players who turn off HDD mode in Cyberpunk 2077's settings have even more NPC variety, though the option is easy to miss. Some fans couldn't help but notice the juxtaposition between Cyberpunk 2077's background characters and the disturbing NPCs of Starfield, but the comparison will likely end up feeling less lopsided once Starfield releases its official modding tools.
Phantom Liberty and Patch 2.0 represent the culmination of CD Projekt Red's efforts in redeeming Cyberpunk 2077, and its developers are shifting their focus on developing Project Orion. While Cyberpunk 2077's sequel is in the early stages of development, many players would agree that the project is in good hands, if the commercial and critical success of Phantom Liberty is anything to go by.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.